In the unfolding aftermath of the Japanese earthquake the referendum campaign hasn't got much of a look-in for very obvious reasons. Which referendum campaign? Glad you asked. There are two.

On Saturday, a new campaign was launched – the People's Pledge – to bring about an In/Out referendum on British membership of the European Union, allegedly supported by activists on both sides of the argument (the Lib Dems cunning plan before last May's election) but mostly europhobic.

Being by its nature an insular sort of campaign it doesn't seem to have noticed that there is already an EU Referendum Campaign or that the EU may be busily fracturing under centrifugal financial pressures caused by the eurozone's flawed monetary union. Parties of the far right are on the march again, the centre buckles.

So our lot may miss it when it's gone. But a referendum in the hand is worth several in the bush. And Britain already has a lawfully-established ballot due on 5 May to decide whether or not to back the alternative system of voting (AV) to replace first past the post.

I would say the event "looms" but that would be an exaggeration. This week Ed Miliband (remember him?) gave Clegg what I thought was sound advice when he refused to appear on a shared Yes vote platform and advised the DPM to lie low if he wanted their side to win the vote.

But on Friday there was a more interesting clash in print, just as the tsunami overwhelmed north-east Japan – and all media attention. Some business leaders wrote to the Telegraph urging a Yes vote while a group of 25 historians (mostly Tories, so far as I can tell) wrote to the Times urging a historic No.

Being a technie-twit I can't find the Telegraph letter anywhere (the paper's own search engine asked if I meant "TV referendum"?) but here's a copy of the historians' missive. On Radio 4's Today Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, crossed pens with slick City PR man, Roland "Rat" Rudd, good friend of the BBC's Robert Peston.

I can't say either of them sounded very smart. More a case of reading from guidance notes provided by their handlers. Rudd protested that here was a "once in a lifetime opportunity to change our broken system" (copyright N Clegg), called AV "a clapped out, won't work form of voting" which would undermine the long-fought historic battle for equal votes for all, transparently counted to achieve a result.

Foreman pointed out that 60% of Australians would like to abandon AV (there is discontent with poltics there, too, as everywhere) and that activists hang around outside AV polling stations telling folk how to vote – not something her first-past-the-post heroine, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, would ever have stooped to do (ho, ho).

Rudd solemnly warned voters that Britain is the only European country to use first past the post – as if that would swing many votes. Foreman countered that the AV reform is being promoted by the same business community which urged Britain to join the euro – "and thank goodness, we did not".

I think this is a telling point. In tough times, and easy ones, politics, like life in general, is full of panaceas: joining Europe (or the euro), going decimal, getting rid of the Windsors, putting fluoride into all drinking water, banning page 3 girls in the Sun, promoting complimentary medicine …

In this case the Yes camp claims MPs will be more responsive, more hard-working, more representative if they are elected by "more than 50% of the voters" – by which they actually mean those who turn out to vote. Clegg said it again at the weekend.

As for panaceas they sometimes achieve useful reform, sometimes unexpected consequences, benign or otherwise. But life's difficult choices remain what they were before. The core case for a Yes vote on 5 May is that up to one-third of voters now repudiate the binary voting tradition – Tory or Labour (formerly Liberal/Whig - of the past. They seek greater pluralism and choice. To deny this is "unfair" and a "wasted vote".

That's a powerful claim which impresses me. Systems are designed to meet human needs. Yet I remain sceptical about both the substance of this argument and the extent to which there is an overwhelming case for changing the traditional way of deciding most things – first past the post is a sporting metaphor, after all - just because a lot of people want it.

After all, a lot of people want cheaper petrol, capital punishment, better public services and lower taxes. Not enough people value liberty, itself an elusive concept on which so much else depends.

The issue is not resolved by looking at the line-up either. There are nice and nasty people on both sides. Thus Ukip supports a Yes vote and the BNP opposes it, both panacea parties with nasty tendencies, fundamentally unserious: their policies don't stack up.

The No campaigners are caricatured as rightwing and elderly, denounced by the likes of George Monbiot (no spring chicken) in ferocious, moralising terms – as he did the No camp in the Welsh referendum. It's more complicated than that, most parties are divided on the AV issue, some because it doesn't go far enough for the pure PR lobby which wants STV (the single transferable vote).

The Nationalist parties favour a Yes. So does the communist party. A Daily Telegraph blogger argues that a Yes will help "restore Britain's independence from the EU" by helping elect Ukip MPs who can dictate to the Tory party in a hung parliament at Westminster. That must be like the Lib Dems now dictate? Duh.

The real divide, I sense, is between those who assume Britain needs radical voting change to shake up the system in favour of whatever it is they favour and those - sceptical about zeal – who think there's no situation so bad that idealists can't make it worse. Both are perfectly respectable views.

Personally, I am still undecided as to which to favour and ashamed of my indecision. But I am beginning to sense that the No campaigners may prevail. It depends on turnout, as the Yes camp knows. But there's a worry here, too, with which I leave you.

London, cosmopolitan, progressive and basically pro-business, doesn't have any local elections on 5 May – a problem for the Yes camp. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where versions of PR voting exist for local historic reasons, do have elections.

They are familiar with non first-past-the-post voting and can hope to benefit from the greater leverage which fragmentation at the centre would probably give them.

What if the Yes camp wins narrowly, on the votes of the Celtic Fringe? I know what the Yes camp's answer will be (that Labour sometimes governs on Celtic majorities at Westminster), but such a result will not be easy to manage.